The Knicks’ coaching search continues to crawl along with another former head coach, James Borrego, set to be interviewed. And if any Knicks fans (or people in their front office) were hoping the Jason Kidd situation in Dallas might change, Nico Harrison squashed that like a cockroach this week.
This weekend, the Knicks will interview former Hornets and current Pelicans assistant coach James Borrego, a story broken by James Edwards III of The Athletic and confirmed by multiple other Knicks reporters.
Borrego has the reputation of a creative, analytics-driven offensive coach, which would be a change in style from the coach he is interviewing to replace, Tom Thibodeau. While Borrego compiled a 138-163 record in four seasons with Charlotte, that undersells the job he did with a rebuilding roster. It felt like he had the team maybe turning a corner, the Hornets appeared to get better each year and won 43 games his final season (which did not make the playoffs in the East that year). Borrego is also a CAA client, the firm where Knicks president Leon Rose had worked.
The Knicks have previously interviewed former Grizzlies coach Taylor Jenkins, former Cavaliers/Lakers/Kings coach Mike Brown, and Timberwolves lead assistant Mikah Nori for the job.
One guy the Knicks will not interview is Jason Kidd. New York reached out to Dallas with a request to interview Kidd several weeks ago and was shot down, but that was not enough to kill the rumors. The theory went that Kidd really, secretly, wanted the Knicks job — despite the Mavericks just landing Cooper Flagg with the No. 1 pick — and he would pressure Dallas to change its mind. Those rumors were presented to Mavericks GM Nico Harrison hours after they selected Flagg, and he seemed surprised that anyone thought that, and then he officially and unequivocally crushed them, as quoted by Christian Clark at The Athletic.
“Are there rumors still out there about J-Kidd?” Harrison said. “I thought I shut them down. Yes, he will be the coach next year.”
Can we move on now?
Borrego is now the betting favorite to replace Thibodeau, but there is no clear frontrunner yet. Whoever gets the job will have tough shoes to fill because in his five years at the helm of the Knicks Thibodeau led the team to the playoffs for times — the same number of playoff appearances the team had in the 20 years prior to him becoming coach — and the team’s first Western Conference Finals in 25 years. There was a segment of Knicks nation, and apparently a large segment of the Knicks front office, who thought Thibodeau’s message and style had worn out in the locker room and he had taken them as far as he could. The idea was that if the Knicks wanted to win a title, they needed a new coach. However, Thibodeau was fired without an upgrade in the wings, or even really a succession plan.
So the process continues as we are three days away from the start of free agency.
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